I have always been a huge fan of Peter Elbow. Since I started teaching, his name has come up in nearly every seminar or workshop I’ve ever attended. As I was reading his section in When Writing Teachers Teach Literature, I couldn’t help but wonder how he shot to such popularity among English teachers. Then it came to me. Peter Elbow is so popular among teachers because he truly thinks outside of the traditional teaching scope and does a lot to ensure that his students aren’t only reading texts, but understanding it. While reading, “Breathing Life into the Text,” I found myself, yet again, loving Peter Elbow. He basically suggests four methods we should use to help students engage in text as they do in writing. I particularly liked two of his points: having students write before reading, and having student’s text-render.

As usual when I read and respond I almost always discuss either what I’m doing with my class, or how I can improve what I’m doing with my class. I was really pleased to know that I seem to be doing ok. Elbow wrote, “Before I ask students to read the text, I like to ask them to write on the theme or issue that is central to the text” (194). Just before my class started reading The Odyssey, that’s exactly what I asked them to do. The beauty of literature is that most often the central theme is so simple that it can be applied to anyone. Personally, I think if the theme isn’t relatable then perhaps we wouldn’t have so many avid readers. I digress. Before we started reading, I asked my students about their struggle to get to the United States-and even if it wasn’t a struggle, I wanted them to discuss how they got here and people they met along the way who either helped or hindered them. They gave such amazing stories of a real life struggle to get here; I guess a real struggle to get to their new home. Most of my regular (native English speakers) students have attempted this in the past, but my ESOL students by far wrote the most descriptive pieces I have ever read. Naturally they shared out loud and I think that brought them closer together as a class. Whether from Nigeria, South Korea or Ecuador, each student knew and experienced a struggle to get to the United States. After this activity, they were a lot more empathetic toward Odysseus. In the past, my students saw him as arrogant and wily, which he is, but they neglected to see him as a human who did inevitably want to get home for a better life with his wife and son. Now as we continue to read, my students are much more involved in his journey and are paying closer attention to what he takes or loses from each encounter on his way home.

Elbow’s concept to get them writing before reading really did help my students understand and empathize with Odysseus and his journey home. I just started The Odyssey about two weeks ago and I’m pleased to read that allowing my students to experience the text will also enhance their meaning. I feel that I already have them look at the words and phrases and discuss preconceived notions and embedded reactions, but I don’t think I allow them to act or render the scenes enough. We do pop corn readings to discuss language, but I didn’t start change the tone of our reading or changing character roles until this year. After our 610 class reading and reading Elbow’s suggestions, I started doing character voices when reading in my classes. They totally love it. I almost feel like I’m reading a story to my friend’s three-year-old, but it keeps my students engaged. When we split the parts and read in voices, I notice that they add a silly or serious tone to their parts. I do think this allows them to be closer to the reading. I took Elbow’s suggestion and I asked them to act out nonverbally the scene where Hermes is sent to tell Calypso she must let Odysseus go. It was totally hilarious. There was a lot of finger waving and sass from Hermes that they would have otherwise not implied if we just did a reading. The Calypso passage was also a perfect opportunity for them to do an imaginative writing after the reading. Because the description of Calypso’s paradise is so exact and full of imagery, I asked my students to write of their ideal hideaway. Again I was impressed by their demonstration of strong images and active adverbs and adjectives. They were clearly paying close attention to Homer’s style and trying to imitate it.

I find that it is much easier for my classes to appreciate reading when they approach it as a process, but not something that is already completed. It is important for them to understand that just as a writer has drafts, a reader does to. Every time a person re-reads a passage, they are essentially adding or taking out previous readings. I really enjoyed reading this book because I think there are a lot of good ideas that can be used in the classroom. I notice that some of my colleagues are stale and love the Xerox room so it’s refreshing to be reminded how good teaching doesn’t require a ten minute wait in line in a stuffy copy room.

The ideas that we read about week to week, the inclusion of writing in the reading process, the use of writing to understand, seem to be relatively new. As I peruse the citations for each our readings this week, I see references to pieces written in the ‘80s, ‘90s, but little bits and pieces from the ‘60s and ‘70s are there. I wonder if in the ‘60s, the authors of those pieces were the radical, new thinkers. Hearing how effective these techniques have been for my classmates, I wonder about how long it has taken for these ideas to become mainstream.

In Greene’s Reinventing the Literary Text,” students practice writing from a character’s perspective. This is an exercise that I intend to utilize in my final teaching project. We will read The Harlem Dancer, a poem, and then write letters from the stripper to her grandmother and a friend. After reading Greene’s piece, the idea settled as perfectly suited to this work. How better to get into the mind of a stripper in Harlem? I am sure none of us have had the experience, and yet somehow, I think that we can imagine the anguish this woman feels. I am toying with the idea of having students write a letter from her to her Southern Baptist grandma in — I don’t know — Georgia, the one she supports, and then rewriting it after they have read more about Harlem and survival in New York during the ‘40s. I wonder, what lies would she tell and why? The answers seem obvious. But if the assignment were repeated in the form of another letter to a friend, perhaps someone in the same position in another state, how would the tone change? How much would students gain in understanding from this type of writing?

From the very beginning of this course, each reading has been enlightening for me and encouraging, as I have stated before many times. I do find that they are somewhat repetitive now in theme and content, some more enjoyable than others… But they all say essentially the same thing: that we must allow our students to explore freely.

We visited Princeton this week. We do not anticipate that our son will gain admittance, but we went anyway. We went to the admissions off ice and checked the admissions stats. Twenty-six percent of freshman students had an SAT of 2300-2400 last year. Obviously, writing skill made the difference for those students that were accepted.

The most impressive aspect of the application packet was the description of freshman coursework. They said that all freshman are encouraged to explore an area of interest in a seminar style classroom. Freshman, exploring. I thought that it must be difficult for a lot of those freshman to work for a seminar class, to be free to research., but I had to laugh a little because so many of my fellow classmates are already pursuing this format, at the high school level.

These are ideas that seem to have come into mainstream acceptance in the ‘80s, but it has taken years for them to trickle down through the ranks. I wonder how many kids will be left floundering because their teachers refuse these newer, somewhat freeform ideas. And I wonder, as more colleges adopt this method of instruction, how difficult it will be for kids to adjust to the idea that they can be free to explore and research what interests them.

In reading the articles in WWTTL, I found myself remembering a couple of my undergrad professors and thinking about how in the hell is this feasible in my current position. I am in agreement with Renee about wanting to do my writing in my classes, but the thought of having to read all the student work is a little too much to think about.

I has mixed feelings about Bloom’s attitude, but I do agree that having students write in the different genres gives them a taste of what it is like; however, I have never seen the intrinstic desire to revise that she writes about, nor the willingness to conference of which Glenn writes. I have and do give students the opportunity to mimic the writing of  stories that we have read in class with less than positive results. Unfortunately, many of my students do not take the time to do the assignment much the same as Lovitt’s students but instead of the night before it is due, it is the class period before it is due. The other aspect that I struggle with in these types of assignments is how do you teach studnets “the art of crafting an honest, engaging autobiography, not with confession for therapeutic purposes” (82). Even when they are not autobiographies this seems to happen. Recently, I had my students write 5 minute skits and everyone could tell who was upset with thier boyfriend, most of them played out like a scene of soap opera. On the otherhand there were some really good ones that delt with social issues like racial profiling, okay so maybe there was only 3 out of the 30 that weren’t carbon copies, but it was good for those 3 students, right?

Another gripe I had with Bloom was her statement about the students in her classes when she stated they “will become teachers of literature and, willy-nilly, of writing” (79). I’m not saying that this is a wrong assumption, but the fact that she is so matter of fact about it and does not seem to upset by this fact, nor does she seem to address this problem with a proposed solution. Again I ask, when is it assumed that writing is taught?

On a positive side of things – I found Glenn’s oral presentations to be a helpful idea. I had an undergrad professor who taught Native American Literature who required us to do this type of assignment. We were to research one topic (we signed up at the beginning of the semester with appropriate due dates) write a one page paper with enough copies for the entire class and then present our findings. Each topic tied into what we were studing/reading for that class and it really did bring the lecture aspect/responsibility to the students. In fact, I still find some of those papers that other students wrote useful for teaching certain pieces of literature.

I guess what is really important in all the reading about teaching we do in these types of classes is that we realize different things work for different people. Sometimes we might find something that will work well with our teaching style that will benefit all of our students and other times we may find a strategy that will help that one student who is lagging behind. Just with everything else in life as Swift reminds us with his “Modest Purposal” there is no one solution to all the problems that exist the same is true of teaching, and we as teachers must not get so engrossed in the dancing shadows that we forget they are only shadows.

As a writer, in reading Bloom’s essay, “Textual Terror, Textual Power” I was delighted to see creative writing being brought into the literature classroom. But I have to admit, I was skeptical at how much mimicking literature would really help with interpreting the meaning of a text. Clearly, writing about literature helps with thinking about literature. (I like that Bloom calls it writing literature, as opposed to Scholes who seems convinced that by definition students cannot create literature, but instead create “practicings.” It’s a semantic thing, but one that probably makes a big difference when trying to empower students.) But Bloom’s examples of the results of this exercise seem to show more that the act of writing literature helped the students to develop a better understanding/empathy with the craft of writing (the rigor, the difficulties, the rewriting, etc.) than developing skills for finding meaning.

It was in reading Cheryl Glenn’s account (in “The Reading-Writing Connection – What’s Process Got to Do With It”) of trying to determine if students understood the difference between actual author and speaking voice in Swift’s “A Modest Proposal” that I saw an example where mimicking writing could help solve a specific interpretive issue. I can’t help but wonder if Glenn’s student Dan, who “thinks he doesn’t have to believe what he writes,” might either feel more invested or have a better understanding of what he “will not or cannot see” if he had actually attempted to write a satire. Would writing a satire enable him to see the text from the inside-out rather than from behind a wall that neither he nor his teacher is able to penetrate by simply discussing and writing about the text? In this particular case, mimicking the form of the satire seems a more powerful tool than rewriting from an alternate perspective (an activity both Robert Scholes and Brenda Greene suggest). However, rewriting from another perspective could certainly be used, as Green says, to analyze and evaluate how the author has used the elements of the texts to heighten conflicts and develop themes.

I find Glenn’s journaling account of her classroom model of reading, writing, and thinking to be very compelling. As Scholes pointed out, “what (students) need from us now is the kind of knowledge and skill that will enable them to make sense of their worlds, to determine their own interests, both individual and collective, to see through the manipulations of all sorts of texts in all sorts of media, and to express their views in some appropriate manner” (15-16). Merely spewing facts about a piece of literature on an exam does little to help students learn to interpret their world, and so it follows teaching these facts also does little achieve our real goals. Discussion is excellent, but I think writing has a greater power, both in terms of helping students develop their thoughts and in helping them remember the knowledge and the skills they have learned. As Francois pointed out a couple weeks ago, it is the journey not the destination.

In reading Lynn Bloom, “Textual Terror, Textual Power,” I was happy to be reminded of a problem I had with Scholes’s definition of criticism: the notion that criticism must be a negative examination. Bloom brings up Frey’s point in Beyond Literary Darwinism that “adversarial mode of criticism has dominated the most prestigious journal, PMLA, for at least the past twenty years” (78) and asks “What sparks of creativity can survive in this critical jungle?” (78). While Bloom is arguing for bringing creative writing into the classroom, I can’t help but think this criticism of criticism has other negative implications for both the field and students.

Forgive me as I regress our conversation to largely discussing Scholes here (I owe a post). For the most part, I enjoyed Textual Power. There were several ideas, in the earlier chapters especially, that I appreciated. Unfortunately, for me, his argumentative rhetoric in the last chapter left a sourness in my mind, one that flavors everything he has done up to that point. In this final chapter he seems to go off on a personal rant against Stanley Fish. He gets so caught up in discounting Fish that it seems like he is contradicting himself in his efforts to find fault with Fish’s approach.

Perhaps if I were more familiar with Fish’s argument (or if my brain were better able to absorb all the nuances of so many new ideas) I could understand Scholes’s frustration. But in all the ranting, I just don’t see a major, worthwhile difference between Fish’s idea of interpretive community and Scholes’s idea of cultural codes. Aren’t they both essentially arguing that interpretation is largely influenced by one’s knowledge, culture, and community values? Is saying “Cultural codes enable us to process verbal material” (27) all that different from Fish’s claim that “‘the thoughts an individual can think and the mental operations he can perform have their source in some or other interpretive community, he is as much the product of that community (acting as an extension of it) as the meanings it enables him to produce'” (155)?

Considering Blau’s discussion of how the common interpretations of Roethke’s “My Papa’s Waltz” changed over time, one of the ideas I appreciated in the earlier parts of Textual Power was Scholes’s addressing authorial incongruity. In the first few chapters, Scholes seems to promote accepting that division of ideas exists — not only within a group, but even within an individual: “It would be an astonishing thing if an extended body of written work did not reveal signs of divided consciousness — as if everyday life had no psychopathology, and civilization no discontents” (40).

And so I was surprised when Scholes finds it alarming that Stanley Fish would argue for the cohesiveness of a group, while still acknowledging that “‘Members of different communities will disagree.'” (155) It seems reasonable to allow Fish to define an interpretive community as one that acts to come to agreement, to agree on the principles that govern debate, while not actually resolving all disagreements.

In arguing against Fish, he also seems to contradict his earlier conclusion that in terms of literary interpretation, collective judgment is superior to personal judgment. In the earlier sections he promotes the idea that “criticism is not a matter of personal preference but of collective judgment.” (35) However, in attacking Fish he promotes the value of the individual difference in interpretation:

“Different, even conflicting, assumptions may preside over any reading of a single text by a single person. It is in fact these very differences — differences within the reader, who is never a unified member of a single unified group — it is these very differences that create the space in which the reader exercises a measure of interpretive freedom.” (154)

My frustration is mainly with Scholes’s rhetorical choice to argue so heatedly with Fish. As a reader, one who is not familiar with the ongoing dialogue Scholes is engaged in, I would have much preferred if Scholes had — instead of calling Fish dangerous for being partly accurate — acknowledged where Fish’s ideas were accurate, where their ideas were similar, and then shown me where they diverge.

Dan’s experience with his writing process, from “The Reading-Writing Connection” really engaged me throughout the entire reading. Glen argued that Dan was writing about an idea that he did not believe in (p.111), but later she admitted that it was her who was not “letting” Dan write the argument in the manner that he saw it. She engages the reader with the questions she asks herself about Dan, but she does not answer them. The semester comes to an end and all along I wanted to know what happened to Dan. Did he change his argument? Did he receive a better grade? And if so why? How can we connect with the student who sees the text completely different from the rest of the class, and as a result enters his/her own quiet zone during class discussions? These and many more questions cross my mind as I prepare to begin my teaching career.

Another one of Glen’s methods that interested me was her experience on teaching the reading of Frankenstein as a first time reader of Frankenstein. I wonder if novice students will think differently about an instructor they feel is not experienced in a specific work he/she is teaching. Will that take away from the instructor’s authority, or will it create confidence in the students? In general, I liked how Glen would bring her student’s writings to support the methods she used in class.

Bloom’s piece also provided practical theories that can help students in the reading and writing process. He argues that when students understand what they have done, they will be the one’s worried about perfecting the text. I completely agree with this idea. I had Literature and writing instructors who made the process of understanding text, writing about it, and rewriting so clear, that it made me change my undergraduate major from IT to English. In order for students learn the process, they must take risks in their writing. Glenn shows good examples on how students can take risks. For example on page 101 when she asks students to imitate sentence structure and summarize the text. Short activities like these not only motivates students to work without overwhelming them, but also teaches issues like style and sentence structure.

I’ve really enjoyed the readings this week. I’ve always loved writing, however, I rarely write unless under a deadline. When forced to write, though, I really enjoy it. It’s like deciding whether to go to a movie or a museum. How often do I pick movie because I it doesn’t require any effort or engagement on my part (this is true of the movies I like anyway)? It’s easier to pick mind-numbing entertainment. On the other hand, I am well aware that the memories I have of seeing a museum exhibit far outlast, and have a stronger effect on me, than a movie in which I don’t engage. Maybe this is why I only write under a deadline – it requires more effort than so many other things.

I found it interesting in Carl Lovitt’s chapter on journaling that one student reported that she didn’t want to have to think about reading, that although she liked reading, she resented having to put the effort into it to connect it to her own life. I think it is noble that Lovitt has a “goal of transforming students into lifelong readers.” I agree with Scholes that there should be more to reading literature than analyzing the metaphors, alliteration and line breaks. Lovitt’s journal assignment does not intend for students to create an academic text for the purpose of sharing it with the community, as Scholes advocates, but it does require students to create text upon text and to look at the “So what” factor. Not all students are going to have the same objective in a literature course. Some may be English majors that hope to submit articles in academic journals someday, but what about the others? The journal assignment allowed students to find value in literature because of the self-exploration it prompted. I have to think that Flannery O’Conner would prefer this to the dissecting of her work like a frog in a biology class.

I think Greene’s writing assignments to develop texts from the perspective of different characters also provides an opportunity for students to connect with the text on a personal level. For example, the rewrite of The Awakening from a male perspective would require the student to consider his/her views of the male perspective. Whenever a student takes a piece of literature and makes it his own, on some level, he not only learns about how to write but also to explore something about himself. Writing is always about the writer on some level. It comes from the writer’s head and heart, and the more it comes from the heart the better the writing in my opinion, and the more self exploration for both the writer and reader.

I have stated before that I don’t see the point in literature if there is no human connection, if it’s only about analyzing and dissecting. I would like to believe that if everyone made a human connection to a piece of literature at least once in their high school or college career, they would occasionally choose to pick up a thought-provoking novel, essay or poem rather than turning on the TV or sitting down with a book that merely entertains them but does not make them think. Perhaps, like I occasionally go to a museum instead of a movie, they would allow literature to make a lasting impact on their lives.

           Like Laura, I was thrilled by the fantastic results Carl Lovitt described in his article Using Journals to Redefine Public and Private Domains in the Literature Classroom.  As a diligent student who annotates texts, I even wrote “Title sounds boring, but it’s really a great experiment with wonderful results” next to the article in the Table of Contents.  True story, I promise.  Then Laura knocked me back to reality, reminding us that real students put less thought into their journal entries than what socks they should wear to work.  In fact, all the articles about using writing to teach literature gave that “too good to be true” feeling.  For example, to a disappointing eulogy for a father, Bloom merely commented “A very nice tribute.”  With no further direction from Bloom, the student revised his paper, resolving “never, ever to write anything ‘nice’ again!”            Getting students to rewrite anything, let alone do it with fervor, is my greatest challenge as a writing teacher.  The twist that Bloom added, her struggling as a writer in front of them, is something I have not tried-yet.  I think I have nothing to lose.  Another important ingredient in her workshop was a feeling of a writing community in which erasing the teacher-student barrier also erased the student writer-real writer barrier.  By setting the example, and setting the bar for herself high, she raised the students’ expectations of themselves.  Similarly, Glenn’s experiment with imitation (style, tone, point of view, genre) includes a new twist that sparks enthusiasm in her students.  I loved her idea of requiring students to respond to her comments (as Professor Sample said he has tried) and write out their revision plan before they could conference with her.  This idea struck a chord with me because I spent an hour conferencing with a student recently, and the “revised” paper he submitted was exactly the same as the first draft.  Glenn’s idea puts the responsibility for revision with the student where it belongs.

            When Green’s students wrote their own texts in response to their reading, Green says in Reinventing the Literary Text that the opportunity gave students “strategies they need to ‘read like a writer’-to anticipate the reader’s response” (189).  As a writing teacher, I have always wanted my students to write like a reader-understanding what readers expect and satisfying those expectations.  Teaching literature can make students better writers while teaching writing can make them better readers by enhancing the critical thinking skills necessary for both.

            The lesson I take from these three writing teachers is that if something I am trying is not inspiring my students to create great writing, don’t give up-try something new.

When I read Peter Elbow’s comment that he has “come to want some kind of workshop” in his literature classes instead of a straight discussion, I thought “No.” I like discussions in literature classes. In fact, my favorite literature classes have been ones that required absolutely no writing at all. The lit class that I taught without any writing was a Great Books class. We met once a month, discussed the novel that we had read and chose the next novel to be read and discussed. The class ran for about four months. Attendance was perfect except for one student who had surgery. Discussions were lively. Opinions were varied. Of course, the class was voluntary and filled with adults who wanted to be there and were interested in the topic. And yes, I was actually PAID to do this.

I often wish that I could teach an introductory lit class like that one which did not require writing. Students are frequently so worried about the PAPER that will be due that they fail to focus on the reading at hand. They are worried about analyzing and critiquing. They are worried about abiding by STANDARD AMERICAN ACADEMIC PROSE. The are worried about proper MLA documentation. They are worried about writing the correct “thing.” They are worried about their grade. Unfortunately, this worry overshadows the simple pleasure of reading and discussing the text at hand. My favorite part of teaching literature is actually talking about it in class with students, not forcing them to write about it. In a perfect world, students would come to class having read and contemplated the assignment. They would have annotated the text, writing in the margins and adding sticky tabs to the pages to mark what they deemed as relevant passages or areas where they had questions. In a perfect world this would happen. Perhaps I am lucky because this does sometimes happen in my classes. These are the days that I live for.

Unfortunately, not all students are so dedicated. There are students who come to class without having contemplated, without having annotated, sometimes without having even read the text. While I LOVE the prepared students who are already making personal connections with the texts, it is the latter students who challenge me. I somehow want to reach those students and convince them that reading can be entertaining, enlightening, and down right fun, even if it does take work. So for them, I choose such selections as “The Ones Who Walk Away From Omelas” and Gattaca. These are accessible and entertaining readings (or viewings). Unfortunately, some students are already so jaded that they don’t even want to give the assignments the benefit of the doubt. So along come the dreaded journals mentioned by Lovitt.

Though I use these as a way to ensure that students are doing the readings (I collect them at irregular, unannounced intervals), I also use them as prompts to help students begin to connect with the readings. I tell my students that grammar, spelling, and documentation do not count. I provide them with a prompt that asks them to note passages that affect them, images that they think are strong. These are followed by the question “Why.” I encourage them to note any questions (think difficulties) they encounter while reading. I have found this assignment to be successful in getting most students to engage with the text. Of course, there will always be those who simply do not want to read. For many, however, the journals help to focus their own thoughts on the texts. Many students have told me at the end of the semester that they actually have begun to enjoy reading. Be still my heart!!! This is my goal in a literature class. My goal is not to create the next generation of literary critics turning out pages of Shakespearian interpretation. It is to engender a love, or at least a greater like, for reading.

While I recognize the relevance of writing, while I realize that writing forces rigorous thought, I do not think that is always needed. Sometimes a good discussion is more than adequate. Sorry Uncle Peter.

Edith

Okay, so I posted on entry early. To make up for it, I am posting this one late. Not to confuse you, this is my post about the Scholes text. I will post again for this week’s readings.

Inside/Outside

There are three things that struck me in the Scholes’ text that I feel the urge to comment on. The first two are relatively simple; the third is more personal. I recognize that none of these are the “deep” content of the text, but I believe they are worthy of discussion and note.

To begin, on page 46 Scholes advocates withholding information that would help students to understand Hemmingway’s references to Mantegna until “after they have worried the meaning … a bit without this evidence.” This withholding empowers the teacher and diminishes the student reader. If Scholes really believes that this information is vital to understanding the passage in question, keeping that information from his students will only frustrate them, and in the process make him look like the revered holder of all knowledge. I also think Scholes’ word choice of “worry the meaning is telling.” Does he want his students to actually worry, as in have anxiety because they are unable to perform the required task? If so, he is then able to rescue them with his profound knowledge as the all-seeing, all-knowing teacher. (Actually, this strikes me as his attitude throughout the text with his constant references to his other writings. But I digress.) Perhaps I am reading too much into his word choice and intentions in this passage. Perhaps I am interpreting wrongly.

Secondly, on page 43, Scholes writes that literary study “opens the way to a critique of culture.” I find this an interesting comment in the light of other arguments that the study of literature is solely for the purpose of enjoying literature, that it serves no real purpose. Perhaps Scholes is attempting to create a “real” reason for studying literature that will validate it outside the ivory tower of academia. (More on this later.) Even if not, this leads to the dangerous territory of teachers leading and dominating the discussion and critique of society. I know this is true because I usually (I would love to say always but was taught to never (ha!) use absolute words in writing.) try to link readings to life with the “so what” question. This does typically lead to a discussion of society. Students are very quick to condemn the cultures of our society that preceded our own. They desperately want to condemn the husbands in “The Story of an Hour” and “The Yellow Wall Paper.” They automatically read these stories from a feminist perspective without even realizing it while I, on the other hand, have a certain amount of sympathy for the husbands. I find it difficult to maintain a completely hands off attitude in these discussions. Yet I don’t want to lead the students into the “only acceptable reading” idea that the teacher knows best.

This leads me to my third area of interest in Scholes’ text. Scholes points out a dichotomy between reality and the academic life. He claims that this is “the most problematic, and, therefore, perhaps the most important” distinction in his basic structure (5). He explains that we “despise our own activities as trivial unless we can link then to a “reality outside academic life” (5). He advocates that this distinction is false and that there does not need to be a link to reality to validate the study of literature. Yet he later states that the study of literature “opens the way to a critique of culture” (43). In this statement he contradicts his earlier statement that we do not need to have a link to the world outside of academia for the study of literature. At one point Scholes echoes Fish’s argument that literature needs no reason to exist as an area of study; it is its own validation. Yet Scholes later counters his own argument.

It is this very contradiction that I find intriguing because it is echoed through history and my own teaching experience. From the early stages of education in this country there has been a battle between composition and literature. Literature was the elite study that needed no reason to exist. It simply was. Composition, on the other hand, was very egalitarian in its efforts to raise the less culturally refined to the ranks of the elite. Not only has this struggle been seen through the history of English departments, but it can also be traced through my own teaching career. I teach both composition and literature. For a long time, though I thoroughly enjoyed teaching literature, I saw no use for it outside the ivory towers of academia. Therefore I turned to composition to deem my job as worthy. Everyone needs to be able to communicate and to write well. This was an area that translated well to the real world outside of academia. It was easy to explain to students why they needed to take composition, no matter what the major. It was less easy to justify literature as a required study. Yet I continued to struggle to justify it to both my students and to myself. Finally I allowed myself to say to my students (and to myself) that they needed to take it because it was fun. Of course they looked at me as if I was crazy. However, once I admitted this to myself and gave up on the idea of justifying literature as being “useful,” my students did actually begin to enjoy the study, at least some of them. Yes, our conversations frequently turn to the “so what,” which I think is a good thing, but sometimes we just read something and admit, “wow, that was pretty neat.”

So I may have focused on a minor part of Scholes’ work, but it is a part that speaks to me personally as it elucidates my own struggle with “why.”

Edith

She is a model student. Always on time for class. Never skips. Turns in each assignment with confidence, having started them all at least two weeks before the due date. Her course load is challenging, her GPA high. In the staff room, where teachers always talk about their students, her name is only mentioned in moments of praise. Yes, she is a model student. But a model of what?

Has anyone ever asked her what she really thinks about the subjects she studies? Have her instructors, so admiring of the bright, hard worker who is “a joy to teach,” ever given her the opprotunity to explore her own growth as a reader, thinker or writer? Have they acknowledged the agonizing effort she exerts to produce the “well-developed, critically aware” discussions of their subject matter?

Is she even human?

In most cases, no. Her teachers are not like Bloom, Glenn, Greene, Elbow or Lovitt. They are mechanical apparatuses, seeking to profess the knowledge they have obtained through years of study and thus stamp out little versions of themselves. She is a gifted reader, a gifted writer. But only because of what they gave gifted to her.

Perhaps my feelings on the matter are biased, tainted by my own experience as a “model student” followed by several years of employment in the mechanical institution I have previously railed against. I would like to think that I am simply jaded, but sadly I fear that is not the case. Writers and teachers like Bloom (et al) have for thirty years been writing about and teaching in the mode of self discovery, creating and espousing environments wherein the student is treated humanely and the authentic development of her knowledge base held paramount. Yet the prevailing sentiment remains – “IT’S LITERATURE! ALL HAIL THE WRITTEN WORD – so long as it’s canonical, anthologized and definitely NOT written by you.”

So what do we get? Graduate students who have submerged rich throughtful voices, only to be resurrected through challenging exercises in creative nonfiction and personal discovery. Glenn’s students who, so enamored with the novelty of conferencing, line up outside the professor’s door just to talk about their writing because, for the first time, someone will actually listen. And we see “readers” initially unable to connect their own lives to a text until allowed to step out from under the authority of academia and the auspices of analysis.

Glenn is right. When writing teachers teach literature, we honor the process, not the machine. We encourage our students to interact with the text – analyze it, own it, become one with it and in so doing transform it in their own critical, creative way. We help them learn to silence the judge – that voice that tells them they are not good enough, not bright enough, not wise enough to navigate safely through the difficulty of a text and write deeply, passionately about its (their) meaning in the world. We open doors for our students, inviting them into a community that respsects individual progress and values the social nature of reading.

We honor their abilities. We accept and treasure their humanity.

I don’t have a higher tolerance for failure than my students. I agonize over every reading, every assignment, every word on the page. So help me if I have – or ever will – instill that sort of fear in one of my pupils. I don’t want any model students. I want readers. I want thinkers. I want writers.

I want human beings.

-Ginny

Only having read a few of the sections of When Writing Teachers Teach Literature: Bringing Writing to Reading so far, I’ve found it to be one of the most useful assigned readings of this course. I particularly connected to Cheryl Glenn’s “The Reading-Writing Connection-What’s Process Got to Do with It?” Throughout her journal entries, she stresses the importance of reading, writing, and speaking as processes that begin as rough drafts that may be polished and refined through more reading, writing, and speaking.

This semester I’m teaching a 12^th grade literature course to the same group of students I instructed last semester in composition. I’ve found that they are terrified of expressing their opinions about literature, especially when it comes to poetry. Most of these students are college-bound, but have not ever taken advanced courses. They don’t seem to have the vocabulary to talk about literature, and are afraid of saying the “wrong” thing. This week, I spent a good portion of the class teaching them about the possibility of individual interpretations of literature, that there’s not necessarily one “right answer” to a poem, that I don’t have all of the answers.

Because I had spent so much time working with these students to develop writing fluency, they are very familiar with low-stakes writing; one of my mantras during quick writes was “write first; think later.” Just getting something down on the page was a great achievement for many of these students. So this week, I applied that same technique to reading and the discussion or literature. While we were looking at a new poem, I encouraged them to jot down whatever came to mind, to “brainstorm the poem,” that there were no wrong answers. They appreciated the idea of having a “rough draft” of reading; this strategy enabled most of the students to take the risk of jotting something down or adding to the discussion. I have to admit that reading Glenn’s chapter gave me a sense of validation regarding my teaching method. I enjoyed seeing in print an approach I had tried just a few days earlier. Despite my success with this method, I still had a few students who insisted they had nothing to add to the reading of the poem; they just “didn’t get it.” I’ll need to work on another strategy for including them in this process.

One of the most appealing features of Glenn’s chapter is the detailed explanation of writing prompts that she uses in her ENGL 205 course. The writings she assigns early in the class focus on summarizing a text, whether in a few words, a sentence, or a paragraph. Her emphasis on teaching students to effectively summarize before moving on to interpretation follows the chart we discussed in class last week: a reader must have a literal understanding of the text before she can move to a deeper, more critical reading. Based on the student samples Glenn offers, this strategy seems to work well for her class; however, I was often left wondering if she only opted to choose the best student work to be included in her chapter. It might be more representative of the effectiveness of the assignments if both less successful and more successful examples of student writing were included.

As a bit of an aside, I would like to build on our prior week’s discussion of grading; I feel that Glenn is working toward a successful balance between high and low-stakes writing. One of Glenn’s students, Gretchen, comments that “with the three critical responses and seven ‘freewrite’ journals that this class does a great job of combining the two” (110). Glenn grades several written assignments solely on completion, allowing her students more freedom. The three critical responses are examined and assessed more closely. The one area of assessment where I would question Glenn’s technique is in the overwhelming amount of time she spends conferencing. It’s not clear if all of these student conferences are occurring within standard office hours or if Glenn is staying late to get through the long lines of students hoping to discuss their revisions, but she often remarks how tired she is and how much time she’s spending in this area for the course.